ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Voice - Data - Video Discussion Little question

In Ireland in the past each switch had an assigned range of numbers and it was possible to identify exactly which switch each number belonged to and it was impossible to port the number to another switch without all sorts of problems i.e. you'd have to take a number on the exchange you were moving to and have your calls forwarded from the old number but, pay line rental for both lines!

The situation now is we have MNAs (Minimum Numbering Areas) which consist of groups of exchanges within a specific area code. It's usually no problem to move your number within the same MNA, but it can be problematic if you want to take it outside that area.

E.g. Dublin's (01) area code, has 3 MNAs.

If you change to another provider who actually move you over to their equipment e.g. a cable phone, VoIP or some of the LLU (local loop unbundling) providers you're assigned a new number on their range within your MNA, then within a few days your existing number is ported over and "mapped onto it"

They're in the process of radionalising our numbering plan in Ireland at the moment. This involves merging the existing 63 area codes and creating larger region codes with 7-digit local numbering.

The current system simply has too many sub divisions and makes porting numbers rather messy.

You have:
01 - Greater Dublin Area
02 - Cork City and County.
04 - East
05 - Midlands and Southeast
06 - Southwest/Midwest
07 - Northwest
08 - Mobile Services (there are now more numbers assigned in this prefix than in all of the other area codes combined!!)
09 - West

The problem is that each of those regions subdivides into up to 19 area codes!

E.g. 02 splits into (021), (022), (023) right through to (029)
09 splits into (091)... through to (0909) !!

They're basically moving to a system where we'll just have the regional codes without the lower level sub-divided areas.

The mobile 08 code is split into :
083 - XXX XXXX (3 Ireland)
085 - XXX XXXX (Meteor)
086 - XXX XXXX (O2 Ireland)
087 - XXX XXXX (Vodafone)
088 - XXX XXXX (Digiweb 4G)
089 - XXX XXXX (Tesco Mobile)

Originally, they had to change the prefix on your mobile number if you changed operator, now there's full portability so you keep the prefix. There are actually very few numbers issued on the newer networks prefixes as most people ported to them rather than having a new number assigned. The vast majority of numbers being 087 and 086.